It's Leopardus tilcayo aka 'tilcayo tiger cat' and it's very cute. Wikipedia doesn't have a page dedicated to it yet.

Bonus pics: https://www.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/SEI_...

https://media.zenfs.com/en/live_science_953/73a4cafd69e9e863...

https://media.zenfs.com/en/live_science_953/1fea354ba7a8db69...

https://thepeninsulaqatar.com/get/maximage/20260917_17896627...

> And they said, ‘I don’t know! My grandpa called it tilcayo, so I call it tilcayo.

I'm curious if the locals knew it was distinct from other similar species, e.g. Oncilla/L. tigrinus, or if tilcayo is the locals' name for a broader set of 2+ visually similar species?

Positively tiny. Really makes you wonder what else is still out there.

Also an amusing disjoint between it being called "tiger" cat but having leopard spots. At least the latin name is more on point.

About seemingly nice cats… Anyone remember Pinky the cat?

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/in1ANEEba2s

Awwwww pspspspsps kitty kitty ^_^

Desperately trying to find a video with the original meowing sound...

Very good news that a new species was discovered that's not a microbe or a fungus!

Be careful, they are evolving, and everyone was worried that AI was taking over.

Wow, I expected it to be a DNA based split or something like that, but a genuinely new to science mammal is pretty cool!

I don't understand how they're different species from others. By what definition of species are they different species, as opposed to (say) subspecies?

On a related paw, Leopardus guigna (güiña) in Anticura goes by the cute name of kodkod:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodkod#/media/File:Leopardus_g...

The first good news in 100 years

A bunch of Pokémon playing cat ladies out there goes «Gotta catch’em all!»

Beautiful. Can't believe how mini and colorful.

It always surprises me when people discover new animal species. These little kittens look very cute.

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That's a good looking kitty!

> when the researchers compared complete genomes from 38 individuals across the Leopardus genus, the results showed that not only was L. tilcayo different from the other tiger cat species, but it had diverged from them around 1.4 million years ago—an evolutionary distance comparable to that between modern lions and extinct cave lions.

So around 2.8 million divergence-years. Going by wikipedia, the divergence between lions and cave lions is much less:

> Genetic analysis of ancient DNA has revealed that while closely related, it was a distinct species genetically isolated from the modern lion (Panthera leo), with the genetic divergence between the two species estimated at 500,000 to 1 million years ago.

( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panthera_spelaea )

Theoretically, that's anywhere from 18% to 71% of the divergence. (The same page also notes that fossils of this species can be about 700,000 years old, which is philosophically interesting in combination with a divergence date of 500,000 years ago.) These are "comparable" in the sense that any two numbers can be compared, but it's not something you would usually say when one of the numbers is 50% larger than the other one. Even less so when it's 400% larger.

I wonder how many different species of cat are just called "cats" in the local language of wherever they're found?

We have just got normal house cats, that we call cats. They're very cuddly and they're great for keeping the mice under control.

Somewhere in the forests of deepest Borneo is a civilisation only recently reached by primitive Westerners, who don't know how to make fire and cook food using only sticks and rocks, and who cannot tell the difference between the blackish-blue berries around 15mm that are good to eat and the blueish-black berries around 16mm that are spectacularly poisonous, and only know things like how to make jet aircraft and rifles and the Rolleiflex 2.8FX camera.

Wandering around their village, high in the mountains, are cats the size of Galloway bulls, terrifying looking things, teeth the size of cucumbers.

"Oh those? Yes, we call those 'cats'. They're very cuddly, and they're great for keeping the feral hogs under control."

It will turn out to be a domestic cat that crossbred with some wild cat species. :D

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I for one welcome our new feline Overlords.

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This looks like AI generated

Babe, wake up! New cat just dropped!